Experts

Expert online advice for parents from the MyDaughter panel of experts.

Sue Goff

Position: Headmistress

School: Alderley Edge School for Girls

Qualifications: BA Durham University (Modern Languages -Russian and French), PGCE Oxford University – St Hilda’s College

Experience:

Sue has been teaching for over thirty years and has worked in a variety of schools : private, state, all boys, all girls, boarding, day, junior, senior and all through. This has given her a breadth of experience as well as many delightful years of working with children. She was educated at Notting Hill and Ealing High School (in London) from 5 to 18 and is delighted to now be back at an all-through girls’ school again.
Sue has three daughters (two of whom are also teachers) – all privately educated – and a grand-daughter, as well as a husband who teaches in the Independent sector.

Summary

Sue is passionate about girls’ education and giving girls the best possible start in life. She describes her girls as confident but not arrogant and sees her role as enabling the girls to turn their dreams and aspirations into reality. She has a realistic view of the world that they will enter and therefore feels very strongly about the need to work with parents – describing this as the pincer-like approach – and regularly invites parents into school to discuss current parenting issues such as social networking sites, how best to support your daughter through the teenage years and how to prepare for the demands and challenges of university selection.
Sue continues to teach and prioritises this as being hugely important. She also spends much of her time “walking the ship” so that she can talk to the girls and staff directly about “their” school and gaining ideas as to how to improve it yet further.

Case studies

Read other families experiences of raising and educating girls. How did they research, debate and decide on the best school for their daughters? Was it the right choice for their daughter and how do they know? Read the real-life stories…

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